Technology, music, and travel from a New York City IT consultant and musician.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Google Mobile (Gmail Mobile) on a Treo 700p

Though I'm pretty happy with the mobile version of Gmail in my Treo browser, I am intrigued by Gmail Mobile which recently came out. Of course I immediately went to this site on my Treo, and found that "Your device does not support this filetype". (As an aside, this is true, read the FAQ: Verizon devices are not supported because the greedy bastards lock you into their "Buy-it-now" or whatever it's called version of BREW so you have to buy every Java app from them directly.)

Still, I don't like to pay for things and I do like to find new cool things to do with my Treo. Taking a look at the gm-Palm-Treo_700p.jad file that was downloaded, I found that it was a tiny text file that had as its first line:

ERROR: Gmail is not supported on your device

Hmm. It did, however contain a link to a JAR file, which I downloaded on my PC and attempted to launch. No go, which I guess is understandable.

OK, I have two possible approaches. One is to convert the JAD & JAR files into a PRC, which seems to be to be easiest. There are some instructions on Sun's site that tell you step by step how to do this and make it look as easy as possible: take your JAD & JAR files, run Converter.bat, and they magically become a PRC file that you can install. Unfortunately, the article is almost five years old, and in five years the MIDP has gone from version 1.0 to version 2.0 (heh, gotta love Sun) and it no longer includes Converter.bat or really anything recognizable from that article. As much as I would like to flip Verizon a big fat bird by easily installing a PRC, I am stymied at this time.

The other approach is to download "WebSphere Everyplace Micro Environment" from Palm and install it so you can run Java apps on your Treo. You will have to fill out a form (hint: say you're a developer and that you work for a corporation in order to get authorized; I remember signing up for this download before and failing) and pretend to have a Treo 650, but then you can download it. I installed the JVM itself (J9JavaVMMidp20) and the two JSR-172 files in case we need "Web Services" to get to Gmail. I then saw that IBM Java VM appeared in my program list. I launched it and clicked Install, and then began typing in the URL I discovered earlier. Then I hit a snag -- there is no underscore character on the Treo keyboard, and you can't hit Ctrl-Space to bring up the list of alternate characters, and there isn't even a paste button. Shit! So I typed http://www.gmail.com/app instead. This came back with an error "The application descriptor was missing the required MIDlet-Name field". Remembering the JAD file I had downloaded before, I noted that it actually did contain this field, so it wasn't that the file wasn't compatible; to prove this I typed http://sbreck.blogspot.com in the URL field and got the same error. Hmm. Do you think maybe Google did this to prevent Treo people from installing this? That would be devious. So I typed in the JAR file URL and what do you know? After a security warning, it came back with "AMS successfully installed "Gmail" midlet"!

I launched it, logged in, and it seemed to work fine! Very speedy and nice. Java is a bit weird because it doesn't really work that well with the Treo four-way navigation (like to highlight buttons) but I would probably use this instead of m.gmail.com going forward.

Plus it was the satisfaction of running a Java app without paying Verizon that made it extra great. Go, Google!

Try as I might, I've had no luck with this. I have installed the two files that enable java. However, even after a soft reset AND a medium reset, I still get "Your device does not support this filetype." Frustrating.

@ LPI think I read somewhere that you must install “IBM something” besides “Java bla bla”I don’t know much about that but I know that I installed alternative mail client Movamail http://movamail.com/ an it woks wonders for me. Enjoy !

lp: did you follow from the "The other approach" lines? Trying to download it from Google is unlikely to work, download it using IBM Java.

anonymous: thanks for the kind words.

sally: thanks for the tip, I think I have only pressed that accidentally which may be the only time I've ever seen that screen come up.

Hulsh: the WebSphere thing shows up in your Treo as IBM Java VM, so you're right.

all: sorry for the late reply, I followed some tip six months ago to send comments to a Google Group and then you could make an RSS feed of them. this clearly hasn't been working for the last six weeks so I haven't seen any comments at all... they are all just emailing me now so I can hopefully be more responsive.

Jason: I hate to say this, but I really haven't used it more than a few times, so I haven't had much of a chance to see how well it works. The last time I needed to get to Gmail on my phone I just used m.gmail.com; it seemed like it would be faster. (this despite the entry on Java Gmail being what seems to be my most popular so far)

My friend told me that I needed to get this for my Treo 700P along with Google Maps. The maps app is great, but getting Gmail was a bit more complex until I found your post!

This worked great for me. Getting the JVM installed to my desktop was the hardest - especially to find the two files I needed. But I found the two PRC files from the Palm Stuffit Download and I dragged and dropped them into my Palm Desktop Quick Install area, did a quick sync and JVM was on my Treo 700P. I then tried to install, had the same problem as you, but typed in the URL you gave and it installed fine with the same error message. Once you are able to to log into Gmail you need to press the center button on your Treo in order to enter user/name and password. After that it was smooth sailing. Thanks!

Thanks to your help, I got Gmail running on my Treo 700p!! I went to several sites but none of them got me up and running. Finally I went to the URL for the jar file you mentioned and it worked! Many thanks!!!

Great post - you are the first google search for "underscore ibm websphere java (palm OR treo)" and I got gmail working great! Sally's fix doesn't work under IBM Websphere MIDP java though. I never thought to look at the text of the .jad - great work!

The Underscore trick of Opt - S - Alt doesn't work on my treo 700p, so if the file you're trying to download is titled "xxx_xx_xxx.jar" how can you download it? Is there any way of uploading the file to another site for free somewhere with an edited filename?

ok, figured out how to log in, but whenever i try to compose a message, (yes, i press the central button on the treo's 4-way.) i can't simply type into the "to:" field...it brings up my entire cumbersome contact list.won't let me enter my own freeform info. whattup, anyone?

@ lp: not sure what to tell you. I have it running out of main memory (not a card) and have 35.2MB free. I have heard Java is a hog so I basically have no apps on my Treo aside from Goodlink. Disable all your hacks and consider turning off stuff like Butler, voice dial, and whatever else remains resident. If that doesn't work, move most of your apps out of C:\Program Files\palmOne\[your name]\Backup and hard reset the thing. (We Goodlink users have no qualms about hard resetting :)

@ anon 2/06: press Menu, then Add New Email Address. I know, it's annoying. That's why I use m.gmail.com on Blazer instead of the java app usually :)

I've been trying to get ebay live auctions to work on my treo 650, and now 700p, for the last couple of years. I must've done a million searches for 'ebay live auction on palm treo' to no avail. What a dope I am: it just occurred to me today that the problem was java...my luck: went to the link for JVM and found the message saying Palm no longer has the download...you would think that with a potential market this size some genius at ebay would've thought to post this info long ago....never mind, i don't expect much from ebay...but now I'm screwed...is there anywhere I can DL jvm...i didn't find it in my palm folder on my mac or in the treo 700p itself. Does anyone have a link to JVM?thanks folks.